Friday, March 31, 2017

After learning last April that John Ridsdel had been beheaded in the Philippines by members of Abu Sayyaf, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada would "work with international allies to bring those responsible to justice, however long it takes."

RCMP Commissioner Bob Paulson echoed this, saying the Mounties were working with authorities in the Philippines.

But during a trip to Manila this month, CBC spoke with people who monitor Abu Sayyaf and none of them had seen a Canadian presence on the ground trying to find the people who killed Ridsdel and Robert Hall.

Lee Humphrey, a Canadian international security consultant who recently met with Filipino military, police and intelligence agents, said he hadn't seen any proof either of a concerted Canadian investigation.

"I asked each and every one of them if they'd come in contact with any Canadian officials since the killings, and none had," Humphrey told CBC.

"They had no reason to lie or cover up any covert effort by Canada to investigate the killings of John and Robert. I do not believe there was ever any investigation nor any attempt to investigate the killings."...

You know that quip about the Holy Roman Empire being neither holy nor Roman nor an empire?It's much the same with the Anne Frank Center for Mutual Respect which, as Daniel Greenfield explains, is neither Jewish nor respectful and which, save purloining her name for the cause of "social justice," has nothing to do with Holocaust diarist Anne Frank and countering the sort of hatred that resulted in her extermination and that of millions upon millions of other Jews.

Long before BREXIT there was JEXIT, the Jews' exodus from Egypt (as compared to the Brits' exodus from the EU), and an exercise in self-determination that, like today's, occasioned much grumbling and hand-wringing until the thing was a fait accompli.

If you love books (as I do), I'd advise you to give the widest berth possible to CBC's Canada Reads. What began, years ago, as an annual competition to determine which one worthy work of Canadian literature the entire nation should read that year (and it is difficult to imagine a more purely Canadian project than that) has devolved into a victimhood whinge-fest as various angry "progressives" shill for the one book that EVERY CANADIAN MUST READ BECAUSE IT HAS THE POWER TO CHANGE THE WHOLE FREAKING PLANET, FOREVER AND EVER, AMEN!!!In other words, not an endeavor that promotes reading for the sake of reading; reading as one of life's greatest pleasures. No, that's much too hedonistic and frivolous for the Ceeb Savonarolas.If anything, Canada Reads pushes joyless reading, reading that's good for you, dammit! (the literary equivalent of, say, cold porridge sprinkled with wheat germ), for the sake of marching in lockstep with other true believers.Too bad Mao's Little Red Book isn't Canadian. It would have been a Canada Reads shoe-in.Update:The antithesis of--and antidote to--Canada Reads:

Reading is not about progressing toward a finish line, any more than life is.

It's a coping mechanism, to be sure--lamenting the Holocaust while shafting the Jewish state by turning the Palestinians into the "new" Jews, and giving a "human rights"/"peace" prize to Mahmoud Abbas:

Thanks to dozens of years of institutionalized anti-Israel attitudes, biased and sometimes even false media reports, and an education system that indoctrinates generations of Germans with anti-Israel propaganda, the Palestinians led by Mahmoud Abbas are seen by the German public as unfortunate victims bearing olive branches for peace, while the Israelis led by Benjamin Netanyahu (and all his predecessors from the right and the left) are considered to be cruel occupiers, murderous oppressors, and warmongers.

All these years later in Germany, it's the living Jews who are still the problem. You would think that at least some Germans would twig to the fact there there's something seriously wrong (and, dare one point out, atavistic?) with that sort of thinking.

"Dark element" is a euphemism for jihad, a cause taken up by a slew of lads who frequented the mosque, were radicalized there, and who ran off to fight--and die--alongside ISIS in Syria. It took a while for the mosque's imam to acknowledge the, um, "dark element" in his midst. Now, though, his eyes are wide open, and he's even helping the authorities clamp down on the, er, "darkness":

A former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst says security agencies were looking for partners in the community to stem the flow of men joining ISIS — but many in the Muslim community were in a state of a denial that it was happening.

Phil Gurski, who was a strategic analyst with CSIS for more than 30 years, says he wishes Aziz was as engaged then as he is now.

"He's trying to work with the police, with the authorities to say 'OK, can we work with these people, can we get to these people before it's too late?'" Gurski said.

"That denial has largely left because they know it's happening. We are not trying to say it's systemic, and it's certainly not existential, but it is happening," said Gurski.

Since no one here--not the imam or the cops or the former CSIS analyst--can actually bring himself to utter the word "jihad," I'd say that a certain degree of denial remains in effect.

Wednesday, March 29, 2017

Since that one's not gaining nearly enough traction, the UN is now (to mix a metaphor) planning to fly another one up the flagpole: Israel has made slaves--yes, slaves--of Palestinians.Considering that Passover, which celebrates the Jews' liberation from slavery in Egypt, is on the horizon, that new lie is particularly grotesque.

Morgan is worried that he inadvertently talked Mindy out of marriage, so he brings her a stack of bridal magazines. He also asks if she’s worried about relating to Ben’s Jewish family. “Just don’t talk to them about your theories on Israel,” he advises. Mindy: “I don’t know what it is. Is it a place? Is it an idea?” Morgan, for once, offers sage words: “I would just leave the whole area alone.”

Palestinian Authority (PA) head Mahmoud Abbas continued to propagate the Palestinian lie negating Jewish history by claiming that the Palestinians are the indigenous people of Israel and the descendants of the Canaanites.

Abbas was on a three-day trip to Germany to add diplomatic pressure on Israel. Addressing the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, he spoke about his alleged pursuit of peace.

Abbas also declared that “the nation of Palestine, throughout its long history, has been a beacon of generosity, and our people are an extension of the 3,500-year-old Canaanite civilization, with urban communities thousands of years old.”

Abbas was further circulating the lie that the Palestinians constitute a nation that existed for thousands of years.

The irony is that the socalled Palestinians have yet to decide just how old they are. Abbas put their age at 3,500 years. However, other Palestinian leaders provide broadly differing opinions on this crucial issue; some go back as far as 15,000 years.

During the 19 years from Israel’s victory in 1948 to Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War, all that remained of the UN’s partitioned territory to the “Arabs” of British Mandatory Palestine were the West Bank, under illegal Jordanian sovereignty, and the Gaza Strip, under Egyptian rule. Never during these 19 years did any Arab leader anywhere in the world argue for the right of national self-determination for the Arabs of these territories. A “Palestinian” nation and “Palestinian” people had not yet been invented.

A prosecutor has charged a Syrian man with terror offences, alleging that he started a fire at a Malmö community centre in order to spread fear in the name of Isis.

Nobody was injured in the fire at a community centre in Malmö owned by Shia Muslim organization Aldorr, but repair costs amounted to a million kronor ($113,000)

The 30-year-old suspect, who denies the charges and the allegations he is a member of Isis, is accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at the centre on October 11th last year, causing smoke damage to the building.

But on Monday the prosecutor insisted that the man is affiliated with Isis and charged him with a "terror offence, alternatively arson". The charge sheet, seen by The Local, argues that "this arson could seriously have harmed the state of Sweden. The purpose of the attack was to seriously intimidate a population group, in this case Shia Muslims, in the name of Isis," adding that the man is a Sunni Muslim who has expressed dislike of Shia Muslims.

According to the charge sheet, police searching his computer found a description of how to make a detonator, which the prosecutor argues shows he has knowledge of how to make bombs. Police also found propaganda films showing Isis soldiers fighting and killing "infidels" and a picture of an Isis flag...

History suggests that when the law makes it illegal to tell the truth, a reliable portion of people can be called upon to lie. So it has been in the past. And so it will be with Canada. So it would be anywhere once the law became an opponent of truth rather than the protector of it.

In a review of the Showtime documentary American Jihad, an NYT scribbler claims there have been "relatively few instances of jihad-inspired terrorism in the United States." The comment doesn't sit well (to say the least) with The Algemeiner's Ira Stoll:

“Relatively few”?

The phrase stopped me in my tracks.

The 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The 1994 murder of Ari Halberstam on the Brooklyn Bridge. The 2001 World Trade Center bombing. The 2009 Fort Hood shooting. The 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The 2015 San Bernardino attack. The 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting.

How many people have to die before the Times stops describing these attacks as “relatively few”? There might be even more such attacks except that the government, over the objections of the Times, has taken certain steps to try to prevent them.

“Relatively few” is Times code for “not a problem that you should worry much about.” It’s not language you’ll often see in Times coverage of, say, school shootings, or Trump-era anti-Semitism and xenophobic violence.

That's because to "progressives" who write for and read the Times, Islam is okey-dokey, all of it, jihad is a modern invention that "perverts" peaceful Islamic teachings, and only "right-wing" ideology is worrisome.

If you start out with the premise (the comforting fiction) that violent jihad is an aberration of an otherwise entirely peaceful faith, you won't be able to distinguish reality from fantasy, and you'll end up sounding like a crazy person. The always wised-up Bruce Bawer takes a look at how this disturbing phenomenon is currently playing out in the UK:

In the Guardian, Jon Henley and Amber Jamiesen sneered at Marine Le Pen for “linking the London attack to migrant policy, despite the attacker being British.” (My emphasis.) They smeared as “xenophobic” Nigel Farage's argument “that the London attacks proved Donald Trump’s hardline immigration and anti-Muslim policies were correct.” The Independent's Maya Oppenheimer censured Farage's comments, too, countering his critique of multiculturalism by saying he'd “failed to mention the fact many of the victims of the attack were in fact foreigners themselves.” (My emphasis again.) Needless to say, the issue wasn't Britishness vs. foreignness; it was Islam. But to say so was verboten. As Theresa May said (in what already seems destined to become an immortal statement), “Islamist terror” has nothing do with Islam.

Islam is a religion of hate. But when that hate manifests itself in jihadist terror, the proper leftist move is to turn away from the reality of that hate – which last Wednesday sent several innocent people to a hospital or a morgue – to the purported “hate” of decent, law-abiding individuals who have had quite enough of murderous jihadist hate. Instead of acknowledging that a large minority (if not an outright majority) of British Muslims support sharia law in the U.K. (and that more than a few privately applaud terrorism), you're supposed to invoke the fantasy of a Britain in which all citizens, infidel and Muslim, share the same values and live together in harmony – except, of course, for the horrid Islamophobes, who, simply by mentioning the Islamic roots of Islamic terror, are exploiting terrorism, dishonoring its victims, and subverting social harmony.

Yes, if only those horrid Islamophobes could be silenced, all would be for the best in this, the best of all multicultural worlds (that's me referencing Voltaire's Candide and channeling the blind and adrift).

We want people to pursue and debate ideas based on what they think, not on what they can afford.

Why is it, then, that at publicly-funded universities across Canada, it’s become acceptable for university administrators to charge a security fee to student groups based on how controversial the speakers they invite to campus are?

Of course these groups can invite speakers for virtually no cost if they aren’t controversial.

But to put on an event where the speaker challenges conventional opinions or makes people intellectually uncomfortable, you’d better have deep pockets.

In our "blasphemy"-averse Trudeaupia, and especially on today's university campuses, "controversial" is a euphemism for conservative, and freedom's just another word for "pay up or shut up."

The other week I finally got the chance to see the hit musical The Book of Mormon. It was hilarious and also extremely blasphemous.

North American culture largely accepts that most religions, particularly Christian sects, are fair game for mockery and ridicule. We’re nowhere near at that point yet when it comes to Islam, which has an increasing presence in our communities.

Muslims themselves, for the most part, certainly aren’t there yet. Good luck getting away with a satirical musical about the life of Muhammad.

A satirical musical about the life of Muhammad? Heck, you can't even get away with drawing some satirical 'toons about the bloke.Not if you care to keep your head attached to your torso, that is.

London police are stumped as to what could have motivated Khalid Masood, a devout Muslim who visited Saudi Arabia on several occasions, to want to perpetrate an act of jihad.Well, if you don't even take the time to google the phrase "jihad verses in the Koran," you are fated--nay, doomed--to remain in the dark, forever.

Re the bafflement expressed by deputy assistant Metropolitan police commissioner Neil Basu, who told the public, “We must all accept that there is a possibility we will never understand why [Masood] did this.” Robert Spencer comments:

British officials don’t admit that there is an Islamic jihad against Britain and the non-Muslim world in general, and so of course they don’t understand why he did this. When the last pockets of resistance are conquered and Sharia is fully implemented in Britain, the last Briton who remembers that Britain was once a free society but, like the overwhelming majority of his countrymen, is concerned above all to observe politically correct niceties and never appear “racist,” will say of his new masters and overlords: “We must all accept that there is a possibility we will never understand why they conquered and subjugated us.” Maybe that person will be Neil Basu.

Maybe. But maybe Basu will still be fretting about the semantics of it all:

But deputy assistant Metropolitan police commissioner Neil Basu said: “We still believe that Masood acted alone on the day and there is no information or intelligence to suggest there are further attacks planned.”

The security services do not like the term “lone wolf”, feeling that it glamorises an attacker, and instead prefer “lone actor”.

I dunno. "Actor" sounds kind of glamorous too, no? As the Bard might have put it: "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women--including those lone wolves/actors waging jihad for the sake of expanding Allah's domain--merely players..."

Saturday, March 25, 2017

I don't know that I agree with Andrew Klavan's assertion that it would have been better for the Republicans to pass something, anything, re health care than to have passed nada, thereby being stuck with Obamacare for the time being. (Personally, I think it would have been better to come up with something better, having had, after all, more than half a decade to do so.) However, Klavan's piece gives me an excellent excuse to post one of my favourite movie theme songs. In case you're trying to place it, it's from that 1996 Kevin Costner golf movie (four words which, in and of themselves, explain why it was not a hit), Tin Cup.And doesn't the above-quoted line from the song below perfectly capture the pickle the Republicans got themselves in with their now-failed Obamacare-lite bill?

This--a cogent analysis by Andrew J. McCarthy, a longtime expert on the subject of terrorism and jihad--is exactly the sort of thing that may soon be branded "Islamophobic" and therefore illegal in Justin "The Totalitarian Squish-Brain" Trudeau's Canada's. So you best read it now, while you still can. McCarthy's conclusion: while Muslims are as "diverse" as can be, Islam, sad to say, is not. And its ways of perceiving the world and its own place in it are entirely incompatible with Western thinking:

There is diversity in Islam, including millions of Muslims who adhere only to its spiritual elements or see themselves as more culturally than doctrinally Islamic. But when we speak of Islam, as opposed to Muslims, we are not speaking about a mere religious belief system. We are talking about a competing civilization — that is very much how Islam self-identifies. It has its own history, principles, values, mores, and legal system.
Islam, thus understood, is not non-Western. It is anti-Western.

Like the conversion of [London jihadi terrorist Khaled] Masood, the conversion of Birmingham has been a function of this defining Islamic attribute. Individual Muslims may assimilate, but Islam doesn’t do assimilation. Islam does not melt into your melting pot. Islam, as Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan al-Banna proclaimed, is content with nothing less than political, cultural, and civilizational dominance.

As Soeren Kern relates in a comprehensive Gatestone Institute report on Islam in Britain, the metamorphosis of Birmingham, along with several other U.K. population centers, signifies this resistance. When the Islamic presence in a Western community reaches a critical mass, Islam’s hostility to Western mores and demands for sharia governance result in non-Muslim flight. Marriages between Muslims resident in the Western community and Muslims overseas tend to result in childbirth rates and household growth that dwarfs that of the indigenous population. Arranged, intra-familial, and polygamous marriages, endorsed by Islamic mores, drastically alter the fabric of communities in short order. Birmingham, in particular, has been ground zero of “Operation Trojan Horse,” a sharia-supremacist scheme to Islamize the public schools.

Kern repeats an account of life in “inner-city Birmingham” by the wife of a British clergyman, first published by Standpoint in 2011. She explained how the neighborhood in which she’d lived for four years had become a “police no-go zone,” in which the large number of newly arrived Somali immigrants now approached that of Pakistanis already resident. Then she recalled her husband’s encounter with an immigrant who had just arrived from Belgium — on an EU passport, like an increasing number of Muslims these days. The migrant was surprised when the clergyman asked why he had chosen to move into their neighborhood. Finally, he replied, “Everybody knows. Birmingham—best place in Europe to be pure Muslim.”

Best place to be "pure Muslim" in Canada?It's a toss up, really. Some say Toronto; others say Montreal. You can be certain, though, that in Justin's Trudeaupia, a realm addicted to fairy tales, bromides and virtue signaling of the most frantically aggressive variety (why, the frenzied way it's done here almost qualifies it as an Olympics-worthy sport), we will have more than a few "no-go zones" and "sharia-supremacist schemes" in our future.

(Ottawa – March 23, 2017) The National Council of Canadian Muslims (NCCM), a prominent civil liberties and advocacy organization, welcomes the passage of a parliamentary motion in the House of Commons today condemning Islamophobia and all forms of systemic racism and discrimination.

A strong majority of Members of Parliament (MPs) — by a margin of 201 – 91 — voted in favour of Motion 103 which further recommends that parliament study these troubling phenomena in our communities.

“Today, a majority of our federal elected representatives stood up to confront hatred in all its forms, and decided not to let fear and misinformation influence their decision-making,” says NCCM Executive Director Ihsaan Gardee.

“This is a win for all Canadians in affirming our collective well-being. We continue to hear from fellow Canadians that we all must work together to promote inclusive communities where everyone feels welcome. The passage of Motion 103 is a critical piece in that puzzle,” says Gardee.

Motion 103, put forward by Ms. Iqra Khalid, MP for Mississauga – Erin Mills, was the subject of an organized smear campaign in which detractors spread false information about what the motion could potentially do, including that it would shut down free speech. Such claims were forcefully debunked by prominent groups such as the Canadian Journalists for Free Expression and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

“This motion will not prevent legitimate and genuine criticism, which is a cornerstone of our cherished democratic rights and freedoms,” says NCCM Communications Director Amira Elghawaby.

“It has been clear that many Canadians are still learning about Islamophobia,” adds Elghawaby.

“Many fellow Canadians fully realized how potentially harmful the fear and marginalization of Muslims could be after the horrific terrorist attack against the Quebec City mosque. This motion reminds all of us, in particular our elected officials, to address fear and suspicion of the ‘other’ and understand how Islamophobia impacts people’s day to day lives,” says NCCM Board Chair Kashif Ahmed.

“Hatred can certainly lead to violence. It can also lead to discrimination, exclusion, and the violation of human rights. We look forward to the federal government’s leadership on tackling these challenges,” says Ahmed.

In other words, we can look forward to more Liberal useful idiocy in the service of the NCCM's "jihad?-what jihad?" agenda.

Islam is a religion of over 1.5 billion people worldwide. Since its founding more than 1400 years ago, Muslims have contributed, and continue to contribute, to the positive development of human civilization. This encompasses all areas of human endeavors including the arts, culture, science, medicine, literature, and much more;

Recently an infinitesimally small number of extremist individuals have conducted terrorist activities while claiming to speak for the religion of Islam. Their actions have been used as a pretext for a notable rise of anti-Muslim sentiments in Canada; and

These violent individuals do not reflect in any way the values or the teachings of the religion of Islam. In fact, they misrepresent the religion. We categorically reject all their activities. They in no way represent the religion, the beliefs and the desire of Muslims to co-exist in peace with all peoples of the world.

We, the undersigned, Citizens and residents of Canada, call upon the House of Commons to join us in recognizing that extremist individuals do not represent the religion of Islam, and in condemning all forms of Islamophobia.

It should be noted that this tissue of nonsense, obfuscation and outright lies, which sounds like something that could have been crafted by the Muslim Brotherhood's PR division, was presented to Parliament well before the Quebec mosque attack, the pretext for rushing through M-103.

Is what happened in London the other day due to something that ends in an "ic" or an "ist"? The British PM insists it's the latter:

Ms May replied that she believed it was not right to use the term, suggesting that such ideology was “perversion”.

“I absolutely agree, and it is wrong to describe this as ‘Islamic terrorism’,” she said.

“It is ‘Islamist terrorism’, it is a perversion of a great faith.”

A few "unperverted" words of wisdom from the "great faith" may provide a clue as to where Ms. May went wrong (dead wrong, truth be told).And, to be clear, an Islamist is merely someone Islamic who is into sharia and heeding the religious obligation to wage jihad on infidels until such time as they feel themselves to be subdued and agree to pay a tax (called the jizya) to their overlords.

Thursday, March 23, 2017

Despite most Canadians being solidly against M-103, that "anti-Islamophobia" motion, our odious Liberal government has up and passed it, of course. And lest you think that, as a mere "motion" the thing has no teeth (or fangs), Anthony Furey swiftly shoots down that one:

Sure, it’s not an actual bill that proposes, say, endorsing sharia law, as some of its less circumspect critics allege. But it does call for a heritage committee study to look at the issue and then report back with a recommendations that could be used to create legislation within 240 days. The clock is now ticking.

First sign: the London cop who was supposedly "guarding" Parliament and who was knifed to death by the jihadi was not carrying a gun. In other words, he was entirely defenseless--a sitting duck, if you will. By comparison, when a gun-toting jihadi stormed Canada's House of Commons in 2014, he was quickly picked off and killed by Sergeant-at-Arms Kevin Vickers, a man who was not a police officer (the position is largely ceremonial) but who had a loaded weapon in his drawer.Second sign: In his initial statement about the attack, acting Deputy Commissioner Mark Rowley, who is described as "Scotland Yard's top anti-terror officer," confirmed the number of those who had been killed and injured when the knifer, after killing the defenseless policeman, got in a truck and mowed people down on Westminster Bridge. Soon afterward, Rowley made a point of saying, "We must recognize now that our Muslim communities will feel vulnerable at this time, given the past actions of right-wing extremists."Excuse me, acting DC Rowley. 40 infidels going about their business on a sunny day in London town have just felt the violent wrath of a chap said to be "inspired" by "Islamists," and Muslims are feeling vulnerable?Gee, just imagine how the rest of the infidels are feeling.Third sign: last night on the BBC, the newsreader kept saying that the attacker might have been inspired by the "so-called" Islamic State (the Beeb's regular way of referring to it, apparently).Meaning what? That ISIS and jihad aren't really Islamic? That heeding the jihad imperative embedded in core Islamic holy texts is--what?--an aberration of an otherwise entirely peaceful religion? Sounds to me like the Beeb, like the acting DC, is more concerned about protecting the "feelings" of "vulnerable" Muslims (so-called) than it is about telling the truth.

Scotland Yard obliquely acknowledged that it was a jihad attack. In a statement, it said: “Officers – including firearms officers – remain on the scene and we are treating this as a terrorist incident until we know otherwise.” A “terrorist” incident means jihad. It wasn’t the IRA. There are no other significant terrorist groups operating today in the UK. This statement from Scotland Yard makes it very likely that this was a jihad attack, and yet another repudiation of the British government’s policy of appeasing and accommodating Islamic supremacists and jihadists while hounding and persecuting foes of jihad terror, and banning foreign ones from the country.

Yet in her own response to the attack, UK Home Secretary Amber Rudd said: “The British people will be united in working together to defeat those who would harm our shared values. Values of democracy, tolerance and the rule of law. Values symbolised by the Houses of Parliament. Values that will never be destroyed.”

To speak about “tolerance” with several people dead at the hands of an Islamic jihadist in London is to signal that it will be business as usual in Theresa May’s Britain: nothing will be done to confront the ideology that incites its adherents to violence and hatred. This is clear because “tolerance” is never asked of Islamic supremacists who take to the streets of London to preach the ultimate victory of Sharia; the only people ever accused of “intolerance” are those who speak honestly about the nature and magnitude of the jihad threat.

As Bob Dylan said: “Toleration of the unacceptable leads to the last round-up.” And it’s coming in Britain. The London jihad attack was yet another harbinger of that.

One often hears of the need to "draw a line" between free speech and hate speech. Loath as I am to draw such a line (unless, that is, someone's words incite violence), I think Alan Dershowitz gets it right in this TLS piece. How so? Dershowitz argues that, while Holocaust denial should fall under the rubric of free speech, the same should not apply to professors who want to teach lies about the Holocaust to impressionable university students:

I, too, support the right of falsifiers of history to submit their lies to the open marketplace of ideas, where all reasonable people should reject them. The First Amendment to the United States Constitution does not distinguish between truth and lies, at least when it comes to historical events. Just as I defended the rights of Nazis to march through Skokie, and the right of Ku Klux Klan racists to burn crosses on their own property, I defend the right of mendacious Holocaust deniers to spin their hateful web of lies. But, unlike [Noam] Chomsky, I would never dream of supporting the phoney methodology employed by liars such as [French Holocaust denier Robert] Faurisson, by saying it is based on “extensive historical research”. Chomsky should be praised for defending the right of Holocaust deniers, but he should be condemned if his involvement in the petition [supporting Faurisson] lent substantive and methodological credibility to their false history.

The marketplace is one thing, but let me be clear that I do not believe that any university should tolerate, in the name of academic freedom, these falsehoods being taught in the classroom. There is not and should not be academic freedom to commit educational malpractice by presenting provable lies as acceptable facts. Universities must and do have standards: no credible university would tolerate a professor teaching that slavery did not exist, or that the Earth is flat. Holocaust denial does not meet any reasonable standard deserving the protection of academic freedom...

There's an auction in Ontario today to flog carbon credits, a move that some say will hobble this province's industry more than ever, and that others (well, me) say mimics the pre-Reformation church practice of selling indulgences to the sinful so they could evade eternal hellfire and damnation.The Medieval scheme helped spark the Reformation. Will the Ontario one help sink the damnable Wynne government? For now the answer to that one, you should pardon the saying, is up in the air.

Our FREEDOM SCHOOL is a three week program for children aged four to ten. The purpose of the project is to respond to a lack of humanizing, self-affirming, queer positive educational opportunities for Black children in the GTA. Freedom school will provide an alternative setting for parents to do not feel that our children are being taught self-love, and a passion for justice and liberation through their formal education. The program is designed to teach children about Black Canadian and diasporic history, to engage children in political resistance to anti-Black racism and state violence through a trans-feminist lens, and to offer children an entry point into the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

We teach children that: your Black life matters, and you must demonstrate to your peers that their Black lives matter by protecting their dignity. Our children learn the things you didn’t learn in school: The BlackLivesMatter Movement, Marie Joseph Angelique, Marshia P. Johnson and the Stonewall Riots, the Memphis garbage strikes, Nanny Maroon and the Maroons in Canada, The Bussa Revolution in Barbados, The Haitian Revolution, Soweto Uprisings. These topics are engaged through child friendly resources like claymation, video animation, augmented realities etc.

I have my doubts that such incendiary and disturbing topics can be taught to the very young in a manner that even remotely resembles something that's "child friendly."That's something Ontario's Ministry of Education might want to probe, but, due to the reverence paid to political correctness and fears of being branded "racist" and "homophobic," will likely be given the widest of berths.

It was the same old nonsense that the UN's been purveying for years.It "explained" how Is-ra-el deserved our judgment and jeers.And see the old aspersions have been packaged as "apartheid" smears."C'est la vie," says the OIC bloc through floods of crocodile tears.They furnished all the lies that were so pleasing to their ears.How they pined for "Palestine"; it earned their undying cheers.And the aim, of course, was to eliminate the Jewish frontiers."C'est la vie," says the OIC bloc through floods of crocodile tears.Their hate was so transparent, man, they let it blast.57 member nations with a checkered past.But then Gutteres reads the thing and it's as bad as he fears."C'est la vie," says the OIC bloc through floods of crocodile tears...

While our politicians at City Hall, Queen’s Park and in Ottawa make a big show of pandering to political correctness when it comes to perceived Islamophobia and about battling other forms of racism, anti-Semitism seems not to be on their radar at all.

Let’s start with the very controversial M-103 anti-Islamophobia motion introduced by Liberal MP Iqra Khalid. A recent poll says only 14% of Canadians support it and a whopping 71% say either take out the focus on Islam and/or mention all religions.

Or take Michael Coteau, Ontario’s anti-racism minister. When he released his new three-year plan to combat varying forms of racism two weeks ago, there was plenty in it about racism against Indigenous people, blacks and Islamophobia but not a word, from what I could see, about the rise in anti-Semitism.

Ironically our provincial champion of anti-racism launched his plan on the day Toronto’s downtown Jewish Community Centre was targeted with a bomb threat and barely made mention of it.

Ditto for Toronto City Hall which has launched a five-phase Toronto for All education campaign — costing $80,000 per phase — to target Islamophobia and anti-black racism while conspicuously ignoring the rise in anti-Semitism in the city.

In light of the seeming indifference, Levy draws this conclusion:

It’s shocking to think but it’s like anti-Semitism is so ingrained in our culture, it doesn’t matter to our politicians anymore.

Ingrained anti-Semitism? No doubt that's partly to blame. However, I see something else at work here. It's the fact that, not only can left-of-center politicians count on the Jews' support no matter what, at this stage of the game our population is much smaller than that of other "sexier" victim groups. Opportunistic politicians, therefore, are much likelier to want to pander to those groups, some members of whom, ironically enough, are likely also responsible for the Jew-hate/Israel-hate.

Friday, March 17, 2017

The magnificent Ruth Wisse has an 8-part online lecture series on the novel, and Liel Leibovitz sees this as one of its valuable lessons:

Some enlightened souls, and there are quite a few of them in the novel, have difficulty understanding why, if England is so keen on embracing its Jews as equals, the Jews should insist on maintaining their differences. Why not marry their Christian neighbors and friends? Why insist on blood and kin and tribe?

The question—and herein lies Eliot’s genius—can be asked of women as easily as it can of the Jews. Although several of her critics had trouble wedding Gwendolen’s story to that of Deronda’s religious awakening—the dogmatic F.R. Leavis believed that an abridged version of the novel, containing none of that Jewish dross, ought to be published independently—Eliot realized that Jews and women faced the same essential dilemma: Will they try and unshackle themselves from their essential nature in a way that is bound to doom them to misery? Or can they achieve a more meaningful emancipation, enjoying equal rights while being permitted to remain true to who they are and wish to continue to be? Gwendolen chooses the former path, Deronda the latter, and their respective fates are a useful lesson in the dangers of deracination.

It’s a lesson, thankfully, that’s likely to shake many modern Jewish readers, who see no other source of light save for the universalist splendor of tikkun olam and who view nationalism, tribalism, and other forms of primordial attachment as a gateway to barbarism and brutality. But a shaking is much needed: With anti-Jewish malice roaring from left and right, we’ve no other prescription but to reject the simpering spinelessness that seeks meaning in other peoples’ values and instead embrace our own. We must now realize, as Eliot and her hero both did, that happiness and survival both depend on loving that which reinforces the best in us, be it the spouse that shares our destiny or the community of which, for better or worse, we will forever be a part. It’s not a lesson that the cosmopolitans in our midst would readily applaud, but cosmopolitanism, as Eliot bitingly reminds us in the very first page of her novel, is not much more than a rowdy casino, and the only freedom it offers is the thrill of throwing away all that’s truly valuable for an illusory shot at momentary ecstasy...

The Canadian military will review its badges, uniforms, flags and associated ceremonial activities to ensure they are welcoming to women, visible minorities, the disabled, indigenous people and members of the gay and transgender communities.

The move is part of the Canadian Armed Forces Diversity Strategy approved last May by Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Jon Vance.

It is now up to the Canadian Forces to figure out how to move ahead with Vance’s strategy, and in January of this year the military produced a diversity strategy action plan, which was forwarded to the Ottawa Citizen by sources inside National Defence headquarters.

The action plan focuses on Designated Group Members, which the Canadian Forces defines as women, Indigenous people, persons with disabilities and members of visible minorities. Also included in the strategy is the LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Transsexual, Queer, Questioning and 2-Spirited) community. The plan includes a detailed list of initiatives the Forces can take to accommodate those members, among them:

• “Review current dress, badges, flags, music, lineages, affiliations, drill and ceremonial, etc. and ensure these customs complement and expand towards a more diverse and inclusive national military institution (Allow dress appropriate to one’s gender identity.)”...

Here's the tongue-in-cheek letter I wrote in response:

When I heard that the Canadian military was looking to redesign its uniforms in order to be more "inclusive" and "allow dress appropriate to one's gender identity," one name immediately sprang to mind: Klinger.

Corporal Max Klinger, you may recall, was the cross-dressing character in 1970s TV series M*A*S*H who, in a desperate bid to flee the madness of the Korean War, took to wearing Scarlett O'Hara-like hoop skirts and other outlandish, ultra-feminine outfits. In those less "inclusive" times, a man who had a hankering to dress like a woman wasn't seen as army material, which is why Klinger, who was bucking for a Section 8--an official ruling that he was crazy and therefore unfit for military service--took to dressing that way.

It's so heartening to know that, in these far more "enlightened" days, when "diversity" (though not, perhaps, sanity) has become a top priority, not only would Max Klinger's wardrobe choices not be seen as eccentric, they might actually be embraced by Canada's "inclusivity"-minded armed forces.

Thursday, March 16, 2017

Arafat's successor tries to refloat the idea that global terrorism--all of it--is the result of the lack of a resolution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict.In fact, the source of the problem is Islamic supremacism and the jihad imperative that's set out in Islam's core religious texts. And anyone with even a glancing knowledge of said texts would know that it's Israel's very existence--a wicked dhimmi entity with the unmitigated and diabolical gall to exist on land claimed in perpetuity for Allah and Islam--that's the real sticking point. As such, this is a "problem" that can only be solved to the Palestinians' satisfaction by eliminating Israel so that Allah's land--"from the river to the sea," as the eliminationists' chant goes--can be returned to its proper owners.The only sane message to send Abbas: From the river to the sea, Palestine's a fantasy.

“That such anti-Israel propaganda would come from a body whose membership nearly universally does not recognize Israel is unsurprising,” American UN Envoy Nikki Haley said in a statement. “That it was drafted by Richard Falk, a man who has repeatedly made biased and deeply offensive comments about Israel and espoused ridiculous conspiracy theories, including about the 9/11 terrorist attacks, is equally unsurprising.”

“The United Nations Secretariat was right to distance itself from this report, but it must go further and withdraw the report altogether,” Haley went on to say. “The United States stands with our ally Israel and will continue to oppose biased and anti-Israel actions across the UN system and around the world.”...

It's way past time to put Professor Falk (who, according to Wikipedia, was "born into an assimilationist New York Jewish family which all but repudiated the ethnic side of Jewishness") out to pasture, no?Update: "You have to have such a dramatic blindnesss...to the flaws of Israel's opposition," says Ben Shapiro, "to make Israel the bad guy in this conflict..."That's Richard Falk for you: dramatically--and catastrophically--blind.

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Scaramouche is my nom de Web. My real name is Mindy G. Alter, and I like to think of myself as a free speecher with a sense of humour. My bailiwick: fighting on behalf of all the good things that free speech helps safeguard, and doing my utmost to highlight the malevolence and imbicilities of those who oppose freedom, whomever they may be.